Daily Times

Nawaz Sharif has been disqualified and coming days will be very troubling for him and his family. If Supreme Court does not overturn its decision of his disqualification, which is highly unlikely, his chances to become a member of parliament again are naught.

A bigger tragedy is yet to befall on Nawaz Sharif and his family when NAB cases will be initiated against them and if they are denied bails, as it happens in most of the NAB cases, they will have to stay behind bars and that can have devastating consequences for the Sharif dynasty.

Nawaz Sharif started his politics under the tutelage of General Jeelani, then Governor Punjab, after Zia’s coup. At one time, in the late 1980s, his personality was the perfect embodiment of Pakistani right wing establishment but over the years his politics has seen many twists and turns.

Analysis of his economic policies would reveal that they were heavily biased in building infrastructure in the urban centres of Punjab especially Lahore. No attempt was made to introduce fundamental economic reforms which could have put the country on the path of social, cultural and economic development. Today all the social and economic development indicators are predicting an extremely bleak picture for Pakistan.

For the last ten years since PML-N is in government in Punjab and every year it spent around 60% of the total development budget of the province on Lahore only while completely ignoring the poverty stricken 10 districts of south Punjab.

While condition of all the major public entities like PIA, Pakistan Steel Mill etc. worsened, Sharif’s family business has seen exponential growth and today it has spread its tentacles in almost all the business fields in Pakistan. Poultry, meat farming and dairy farming are new additions in their financial empire that is sprawled over many continents.

On the political side, he gave new heights to the dynastic politics by introducing monarchical practices in it. His party was run like a personal fiefdom with total disregard for the parliament and his parliamentary party. He seldom visited parliament and rarely held cabinet meetings. He opted to rule through selected favourites in bureaucracy and his party.

Nawaz Sharif further emboldened the regressive patronage structure of politics and exploited the religious sentiments for his political advantages. He continued appeasing the terrorists and sectarian organisations at the expense of large scale destruction of society. National Action Plan, designed by Sharif government to counter terrorism has proven to be a fiasco. His interior minister was an open sympathiser of terrorists. After he took charge in 2013, there was a consensus in the society that a large scale operation against terrorists should have been launched but instead of launching an operation, he decided to negotiate with them and kept on sending his close aides to the tables of cold blooded terrorists.

After he took charge in 2013, there was a consensus in the society that a large scale operation against terrorists should have been launched but instead of launching an operation, he decided to negotiate with them and kept on sending his close aides to the tables of cold blooded terrorists

Passing the constitutional amendment to introduce military courts was probably the biggest anti democratic act PML-N initiated and ironically it was supported by all the political parties. Instead of bringing about judicial and police reforms which could have benefited the common people and deter terrorists, PML-N handed over this purely civilian matter to the military.

However, there was one area where Nawaz Sharif tried to do something different and that was his approach towards India. He tried to deviate from the core policies of establishment and made consistent efforts to build good relations with India and for it, he won the hearts of a large section of the peace loving intelligentsia. He continuously gave positive signals about building good relations between two neighbours. Unfortunately, his approach towards India could not gain roots because it seemed more like a whimsical desire than a well thought out strategy. Ironically there is hardly any other person in his close circle who seemed to share his vision on such a critical issue of our polity. He seemed to act more like a one man army on such a complex and sensitive problem.

People reposed their hopes and trust in Nawaz Sharif that he would strengthen civilian supremacy in Pakistan by building democratic traditions but his politics showed that he learned nothing and he himself became the biggest obstacle in the path of democracy and civilian supremacy. He was busy in damaging those specific democratic institutions like the parliament and the parliamentary party of PML-N which could have become his strength to embolden the democracy.

Some people saw in Nawaz Sharif a leader through which ideal of civilian supremacy could be achieved but they badly failed to understand that civilian supremacy cannot be achieved by a person whose politics is littered with corruption, dictatorial tendencies and palatial intrigues. Civilian supremacy is a goal which cannot be achieved in isolation, rather it is part of a larger democratic edifice which involves social, cultural and economic development and that can only be achieved by a political party which has clear objectives and whose leadership is untainted.

The writer is a graduate in economics and a freelance researcher. He tweets @aatifnazar

Published in Daily Times, August 15^th 2017.